


Results Inconclusive

by LokiOfSassgaard



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-14
Updated: 2011-01-14
Packaged: 2018-05-28 21:27:00
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,201
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6345994
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LokiOfSassgaard/pseuds/LokiOfSassgaard
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock continues to experiment with matters of sexuality.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Results Inconclusive

While the absence of a flatmate did have Sherlock prone to occasional fits of near fatal (literally so, as was the case on one ill-fated Friday night) boredom, he did find that he rather enjoyed the freedom afforded to him in an otherwise empty flat. Sebastian never did fetch up the tapes Sherlock had stolen from his room, nor did he send round any third party to collect them, which leant them quite well to further testing.

By the end of the weekend, however, Sherlock grew weary of the experiment, and instead moved on to conducting tests on the various component pieces of the tapes themselves, finding the celluloid particularly interesting. While visual stimulation, as induced from the tapes by their intended means did absolutely nothing for Sherlock, he had determined the results of the experiment inconclusive. Logically, the problem lay in the content of the tapes, and Sherlock’s failure to become aroused from them had simply been the result of the images be ing rather unappealing.

This problem of arousal was no problem of his own, as simple biology had provided evidence for this fact long before. Masturbation had never been something sexual for him, but rather something his left hand did to make a particularly stubborn erection go away while his right hand washed his hair during a quick shower, the end result being a rather tired muscle in his left wrist and a barely-elevated heart rate. The act was pleasurable in and of itself, but more in the way that scratching an itch on one’s arm is pleasurable, rather than anything too terribly exciting. If anything, he realised all he had managed to do was teach his brain to associate the actions of his left hand with those of his right, thereby making the act of washing his hair something he rather enjoyed doing.

This was a piece of information that he had for quite a few years regarded as irrelevant to anything, and had done his best to delete it. This information had rem ained irrelevant, and therefore deleted (or at least in his mind’s equivalent of the recycling bin) until just over a fortnight after he had started his experiment, when he was sprawled out on the sofa with his head in Carol’s lap. After 72 solid hours of not sleeping, he rang Carol for assistance with the only cure for his insomnia he’d been able to find that didn’t involve anything over-the-counter, prescription, or recreational. While all of the pharmacological methods did work, to a point, this was the only method he’d managed to find that had neither the potential for overdose, arrest, nor a terrible, lingering zombie-like state upon awakening.

The cure had been one of which they had stumbled upon by complete chance, when one night Carol had decided that Sherlock’s hair required the addition of plaits. After making it clear that she would not take no for an answer (one of the many things Sherlock liked about her), she sat him on the floor between her f eet and tried to wrestle his unruly curls into something that almost, but not quite, resembled something similar to cornrows. At first the sensation of someone else’s hands in his hair was confusing, because it was as different as it was familiar. Eventually, he began to relax as a vague sort of pleasure crept up on him when he wasn’t looking. It was again familiar in a very different sort of way, and unlike anything else he’d ever experienced. The word he tried to pin on the feeling, but failed because of the way it seemed to almost fill his head with cotton was contentment. Completely and totally so was he that he didn’t even care that he couldn’t find the right word for the feeling.

Not even a quarter hour later, Sherlock had fallen asleep with his head resting on Carol’s knee.

 

He was just on the outer edges of sleep, focusing more on the effects of long fingernails gently scratching against his scalp more than he was the sensation itself, when he pulled himself into a more vertical position so quickly that his head connected rather violently with Carol’s jaw.

“Oh,” he said, a sudden realisation dawning on him. Sleep was now the last thing he wanted to waste time doing.

“This better be good,” Carol said simply, rubbing her chin where it had connected with a skull that might as well have been carved from granite for as little as he seemed to notice what had just happened.

Sherlock ignored her, and took a reading of his pulse instead. With his fingers pressed into his neck, any lingering excitement from his revelation turned slowly to confusion. Just to be sure, he moved to taking a reading on his wrist.

“That can’t be right,” he said to himself. “I’m under my baseline.”

Carol only raised her eyebrows at him, waiting for an explanation she wasn’t sure would actually come.

He withdrew into his own thoughts for a long moment, his eyes flicking back and f orth quickly as he tried to analyse the information he had on hand. If he had truly been conditioned, as he now believed, then he should be aroused by the associated contact; not put to sleep by it. But it had been undeniably pleasurable, even if not in a sexual sort of way, and he was fairly certain that it had at least in part been a conditioned response.

He knew that he should run further testing now, while the conditions were optimal and variables could be controlled. Without a further word, he shifted to better face Carol and kissed her, holding both sides of her head with his hands to prevent her from pulling away prematurely. He wasn’t entirely sure if he was doing it ‘right,’ or if there was even a right way to go about such a thing, but right away, it registered as awkward, uncomfortable, unhygienic, and very wet. After about ten seconds, he pulled away and took another reading of his pulse.

“Sherlock, what was that?” Carol asked, soundi ng more than a little stunned.

Dissatisfied with his readings of his own pulse, he reached for Carol and read hers.

“Interesting,” he mused quietly. “Although, it’s also possible that my actions simply took you by surprise.”

“Uh, yeah,” Carol said. “Mind telling me what you’re on about, yet?”

“So, you didn’t enjoy it?” Sherlock asked, slipping back to that uncomfortable confused state that had started this whole mess.

Carol sighed. “If you’re going to experiment on a person, you might get better results if you ask them first.”

“Oh.”

She rolled her eyes at him.

“Because that’s the sort of thing that would get you slapped by most people.”

“You’re not most people,” Sherlock pointed out. He shifted to sit back on his feet, moving away from Carol while he finished processing the data he’d gathered from his experiment. “I’m fairly certain that the only reason you woul d slap me would be because I’d asked you to.”

“Are you asking me now?” Carol asked flatly.

Sherlock considered this for a moment. “No. Perhaps at a later time. Good to know where you stand on that, though,” he said completely without sarcasm.

Carol shook her head at him. “OK. And what have we learned, then?”

Sherlock was quiet for a long moment while he considered everything. “Either something about my experiment was carried out incorrectly, or the act of kissing is highly overrated,” he decided.

“You did take me by surprise,” Carol pointed out. “And since kissing is generally a two-person activity, it does rather lose something when the second person doesn’t know what’s going on.”

He considered this, weighing the unexpected variable against the data he’d gathered from the experiment. “Yes, I can see how that would make a difference.”

Again, he moved forward and kissed her without bothering to as k for consent, but was surprised to find that the act did indeed change when the other person reciprocated. If anything, the result was even wetter and messier than before. He very nearly pulled away when he felt her tongue in his mouth, but managed to choke back on that reaction, just to see if maybe it was all just something that took a bit of getting used to.

When he felt her hand on his thigh, he realised that whenever people kissed in films or on television, they often would do something with their hands as well. Not sure what to do with his hands, he paused while he took a moment to work out the best placement for them. Again, he found himself surprised when Carol took one of his wrists in her hand, and brought his hand over her breast. Not sure what else to do, he brought his other hand to do similarly.

“Your left is approximately 430 grams heavier than the right,” he broke off to say.

He wasn’t sure what he was expecting, but her laughing at h im was not on the list of reactions he’d thought she’d have. He took advantage of this, and again took a reading of his pulse. It was elevated slightly, but not by an amount he’d consider significant, as he was still fairly close to his baseline. Whether the increase was because he’d been more awake than the last time he’d taken a reading, or because of his actions, he was unsure.

“Did I say something wrong?” he asked finally, since Carol was still laughing when he’d finished reading his pulse.

“That is not the sort of thing a girl wants to hear during a snog,” she told him simply.

“But it’s true,” Sherlock argued. “Hang on.”

Without warning, as was the way Sherlock liked to do things, he was on his feet and rushing back to his bedroom. He returned shortly after, his arms laden with all manner of digital scales, callipers, and measuring tapes.

“What the hell are you doing?” asked Carol, for the first time since Sherlock had known her sounding unsure.

“Experimenting,” Sherlock answered. “Give me your hands.”

She gave him a sceptical look, but offered her hands to him, watching with a sort of cautious curiosity as he measured the length between two creases on the inside of her index finger. After taking note of the measurement, he did the same on her other hand.

“Sherlock?” Carol asked.

“Quiet,” he replied simply, already measuring two more points.

He continued on like this until he had taken every measurement imaginable between her fingertips and her elbows, occasionally humming at the results of whatever experiment he was running.

“I need you to take off your shirt,” he said distantly.

“You what?” Carol asked, still not sure what was happening.

“It’s too loose,” Sherlock answered simply. “It will get in the way and prevent accurate measurements.”

“O...K.” After one more cautious glance towar d her friend, Carol pulled the T-shirt over her head, drawing her arms close to her chest. “So, what are we doing?”

“I’m curious,” responded Sherlock simply as he took one of her arms, measuring the full length of it.

Carol laughed as he ran the measuring tape along the underside of her arm. “What else is new?” she asked.

 

An hour later, she was lying on the floor in just her bra and pants as Sherlock continued to take measurements that were growing more and more arbitrary. He’d already gathered any useful information there was to gather, and was at this point only continuing for the sake of being thorough. The digital scale he’d brought out had been cast aside, proving itself not nearly sensitive enough for his purposes, but everything else had worked out rather nicely. He wasn’t sure why it would be useful that person’s body wasn’t completely symmetrical, or that it tended to be asymmetrical in its asymmetry, but at that mo ment it was interesting, and commanded his full attention. It wasn’t until he felt one of Carol’s hands on his neck that he even consciously realised that his hands were on her bare stomach, measuring points between her pelvis and her ribcage.

“If I didn’t know better,” she said slowly, “I’d say you were getting off on this.”

Sherlock blinked at the absurdity of that statement.

“I don’t think so,” he said, making note of his most recent measurement.

Carol squirmed lightly at his fingers pressing into her skin. “I think you are,” she insisted.

Sherlock stopped his experiment long enough to check his pulse once more. He was surprised to find that it was actually elevated. It wasn’t at ‘just ran six blocks to the newsagents before it closed to buy a pack of fags’ levels, but he was above his baseline. How very curious.

A slow grin spread across his face as he leaned back. “If I’m not mistaken,” he said, � ��so are you.”

He took one of her hands in his and pressed his fingers against her wrist, letting his grin spread even wider.

“What are you saying, then? That you’re done?” asked Carol.

Sherlock picked up his callipers again. “Not at all,” he said. “I haven’t even started on your back yet.”


End file.
